Chapter 10 - No Witnesses
The next morning, I spent forty minutes staring at a hardware-store shelf without buying anything.
Dad had asked for privacy.
Respecting it turned out to feel a lot like doing nothing.
At eleven, Karen texted.
He let me come in.
I didn't ask what she'd said.
That afternoon, Dad told me himself.
She'd brought Megan's photographs and the pecan bars he'd bought for her.
Not flowers.
Not an expensive basket that might make the visit look generous.
Just the things that should already have reached the right people.
"She sat in your mother's chair," he said.
"Then asked if that was alright."
"Was it?"
"It's a chair, Rick."
He watched steam rise from his coffee.
"She said she was ashamed of how I made her family see her. That's how she put it."
"What did you say?"
"Asked her if she'd ever wondered how she made me see myself."
He looked toward the hallway.
The clean blue shirt still hung on the back of his bedroom door.
"I washed that shirt twice Wednesday night," he said.
"Even after she called. Thought maybe if it smelled fresh enough, she'd change her mind."
I gripped my mug.
"Dad—"
"Let me finish."
I nodded.
"She cried. I didn't tell her it was alright. It wasn't."
He'd told Karen that apologies didn't reopen his front door on demand.
He wanted direct invitations.
No explanations invented for him.
No jokes about his hands, clothes, or work.
And if she wanted to know whether he could manage stairs or late dinners, she could ask him.
"She agreed?"
"Yes. We'll see if she remembers when agreeing gets inconvenient."
Before she left, he'd offered her a pecan bar.
That detail hurt more than the rest.
"Why?"
He looked puzzled.
"Because she was hungry."
When I returned to my rented room, Karen was waiting in the parking lot.
She hadn't come inside.
Her car engine was off, and she held her phone in both hands.
"My parents want a family dinner Sunday," she said.
May you like
I stopped beside my truck.
"They say we can put this behind us. But they have one condition."
